Maybe (Maybe Not) Read online

  When children appear at the door selling luxury candy bars to make money to buy their own uniforms, we know the soccer season is under way. These ill—at-ease visitors on the front porch are the rookies, both at the game of soccer and the game of door-to-door sales.

  Here’s the tableau:

  A timid knock at the door. A small child. Head down, muttering, hand holding out the bar of chocolate as if apologetically returning something stolen.

  The child does not want to be there.

  The parent, standing off in the bushes, does not want to be there.

  And you do not need the chocolate.

  But since you were once the child and several times the parent in this semi-scam, you are obliged to take your place in this initiation of the young into entrepreneurial capitalism, sports, and the American Way.

  (Besides, while it is true that you don’t really need the chocolate, you want the chocolate, and it feels so right to simultaneously help the young and get candy.)

  The nine-year-old daughter of a friend recently went through this coming-of-age ritual in a way that was both disastrous and triumphant.

  Since this was the first season for her team, each child was obliged to help raise money for uniforms by taking at least one case of chocolate bars to sell. A model of soccer-team spirit—everybody plays a part in achieving a goal.

  With no enthusiasm whatever, the girl accepted her case of chocolate in the same spirit she would accept pimples in a few years—something to be avoided if possible, but endured if necessary. She wanted to play ball. She didn’t know retail sales was a prerequisite, but so be it.

  Her mother and father did not buy the whole case outright from her as she had hoped. So much for Plan A.

  Her brother and his friends were no help, though they tried to help her diminish her inventory by stealing a couple of bars. And every member of her Sunday School class also had chocolate to sell.

  She hid the chocolate under her bed for a week, hoping a fairy would take it and leave the money. No luck.

  When the soccer-league candy chairmother called the father to find out what was going on and why the child had neither come to soccer practice nor produced the chocolate receipts, the father’s pride was hooked. He promised results.

  He gave his daughter an emergency-level intensive course in salesmanship and personal responsibility. He and the daughter rehearsed. She came to the door and practiced knocking and he shouted, “KNOCK LOUDER, I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” until she could hit the door like the first wave of a police raid.

  He made her look up, speak plainly, and offer a two-for-one deal if necessary. When he finally got her to shout, “BUY THIS CANDY OR I WILL SET YOUR HOUSE ON FIRE!” he figured assertiveness training had gone far enough. He marched her off with fire in her belly. She was pumped!

  At the first house, her father gave her a go-get-’em pat on the butt and hid behind a tree to watch the kid pitch candy. The child stood at the door without moving for five agonizing minutes until her father realized the fire in her belly had burned out. He rescued her, and they walked back home in silence.

  The father gave her a new pep talk about doing hard things and having courage and how it was when he was a little boy. He appealed to her place in the future of feminism. Real women can do this, OK? OK. All right, let’s get ’em!

  This time she wanted to go alone—her father lurking around on the sidelines made her nervous.

  At the first house, she did her door-pounding and then ran for it.

  Several other neighbors wondered who pounded at their door and disappeared. Unable to go beating on doors, the child spent the rest of the afternoon in the garage, hunkered down in the backseat of the family sedan. She reappeared at dinnertime, defeated.

  The father couldn’t give up. Too much was on the line. Crucial time in the life of his child. He considered the power of advertising. Take advantage of location. The family lived in a university town, in a neighborhood where football fans parked their cars on the way to the stadium for the Saturday afternoon games. Hundreds of people walking by. They would want and need candy!

  The father explained the concept of advertising to his daughter and convinced her that all they had to do was make a sign, and she could stand down there on the street corner for an hour before the football game and the fans would buy all the candy she had.

  They made a sign, HELP THE HILLSIDE SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM BUY UNIFORMS—$1.00—GREAT CHOCOLATE!

  The little girl was gone for an hour. Her father could see her from the front porch and checked on her from time to time. She was selling candy hand over fist. Yes! YES!!

  She came home smiling. A triumphant smile. She had sold ALL the chocolate—the whole case. She was relieved. Her father was proud of her and pleased with himself. What a team they made! They celebrated with a banana split, with extra chocolate sauce.

  A couple of days later, their next-door neighbor, who had been a party to this adventure in retail sales, came over in the evening at that hour when children are already in bed. He and the father sat out on the front porch and had a beer while they enjoyed the autumn sky. The neighbor said, “I have something to show you. It’s too good to keep, but you have to promise not to show it to your daughter.”

  From out of a brown paper grocery bag, the neighbor took a folded piece of cardboard. “I found this in my garbage can.”

  It was the sign the father had made for the daughter. It still said HELP THE HILLSIDE SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM BUY UNIFORMS—$1.00—GREAT CHOCOLATE. But underneath those words, in his daughter’s crayoned printing, was this footnote:

  “MY FATHER MADE ME DO THIS.”

  When I taught philosophy, I began the course by walking into the room after the students were seated and announcing, “We are now going to play musical chairs.” The only further instruction was, “Please arrange your chairs and get ready to play.”

  No student ever asked why. Ever. And no student ever asked how to play.

  They knew the rules as surely as they knew hide-and-seek.

  Always the same response—the students enthusiastically arranged the chairs in a line with the seats alternating directions, then stood encircling the row of chairs. Ready, ready, ready!

  All I had to do was punch up “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the tape machine, and the students marched around the chairs. Mind you, these were seniors in high school. They hadn’t played musical chairs since second grade. But they still knew how, and jumped into the game without hesitation. Musical chairs! All right!

  After removing a few chairs, I stopped the music. There was a mad scramble for the remaining chairs. Those without chairs were stunned. They knew how this game worked—music stops, get a chair—how could they not have a chair so soon? They had “How dumb can I be?” written on their faces.

  Too bad. But they were losers. Out. Over against the wall. Only a game.

  Music continues, students march around, chain removed, STOP!

  Students go crazy trying to get a chair this time.

  As the game goes on, the quest for chairs turns serious. Then rough.

  Girls are not going to fight jocks for chairs. Losers to the wall.

  Down to two members of the wrestling team, who are willing to push, knee, kick, or bite to be the last person in a chair. This is war! STOP! And by jerking the chair out from under his opponent, one guy slams down into the last chair—a look of triumph on his face—hands raised high with forefingers signaling NUMBER ONE, NUMBER ONE.

  The last student in the last chair always acted as if the class admired him and his accomplishment. He got the CHAIR! “I’m a WINNER!” Wrong.

  Those losers lined up against the wall thought he was a jerk.

  Admiration? Hardly. Contempt is what they felt.

  This was not a game. Games were supposed to be fun.

  This got too serious too fast—like high school life—and real life.

  Did they want to play again? A few of the jocks did. But not the rest of the class. It
all came back to them now. Big deal.

  I insisted. Play one more time. With one rule change. Musical chairs as before, but this time, if you don’t have a chair, sit down in someone’s lap. Everybody stays in the game—it’s only a matter of where you sit.

  The students are thinking—well…OK.

  Chairs are reset. Students stand ready. Music starts and they march. Chairs are removed. STOP! There is a pause in the action. The students are really thinking it over now. (Do I want a chair to myself? Do I want to sit on someone’s lap or have someone sit in mine? And who?) The class gets seated, but the mood has changed. There is laughter—giggling. When the game begins again, there is a change of pace. Who’s in a hurry?

  When the number of chairs is sufficiently reduced to force two to a chair, a dimension of grace enters in as the role of sittee or sitter is clarified—“Oh, no, please, after you.” Some advance planning is evident as the opportunity to sit in the lap of a particular person is anticipated.

  As the game continues, and more and more people must share one chair, a kind of gymnastic dance form develops. It becomes a group accomplishment to get everybody branched out onto knees. Students with organizational skills come to the fore—it’s a people puzzle to solve now—“Big people on the bottom first—put your arms around him—sit back—easy, easy.”

  When there is one chair left, the class laughs and shouts in delight as they all manage to use one chair for support now that they know the weight can be evenly distributed. Almost always, if they tumbled over, they’d get up and try again until everyone was sitting down. A triumphant moment for all, teacher included.

  The only person who had a hard time with this paradigm shift was the guy who won the first time under the old rules. He lost his bearings—didn’t know what winning was now.

  As a final step in this process, I would tell the class we would push on one more round. “The music will play, you will march, and I will take away the last chair. When the music stops, you will all sit down in a lap.”

  “Can’t be done,” they say.

  “Yes, it can,” say I.

  So once more they marched and stopped—what now?

  “Everyone stand in a perfect circle.

  “All turn sideways in place, as if you were going to walk together in a circle.

  “Take a single step into the middle so as to have a tight circle now, with each person in the group belly-side to backside with the person ahead of them.

  “Place your hands on the hips of the person in front of you.

  “On the count of three, very carefully guide the person onto your knees at the same time as you very carefully sit down on the knees of the person behind you.

  “Ready. One. Two. Three. Sit.”

  They all sat. No chair.

  I have played the chair game in this way with many different groups of many ages in varied settings. The experience is always the same. It’s a problem of sharing diminishing resources. This really isn’t kid stuff. And the questions raised by musical chairs are always the same:

  Is it always to be a winners-losers world, or can we keep everyone in the game?

  Do we still have what it takes to find a better way?

  Some tangible evidence of the secret life is often close at hand, or, in the case of men’s wallets, close behind. If a man wearing jeans walks toward you on the street, step aside and take a look at his stern as he passes you. You will notice this fat, squarish lump riding at an angle in a hip pocket. There is a permanent wearmark showing the position of the wallet, whether the man and wallet are in the jeans at the moment or not. Even underneath a suit coat, the leather lump and the wearmark are inevitably there.

  Unlike women, who tend to change purses to match shoes or occasion, men usually have one wallet, worn under all circumstances, whether it be to clean out a septic tank or attend a wedding. Consequently, the effects of sweat, body heat, and time give the wallet a warped, lumpish shape more like a detachable leather wart than a billfold. It fits one place on one butt for all seasons and occasions. I tried putting a friend’s wallet in my hip pocket and had this vague sense that all was not well with my world.

  The importance of a wallet is emphasized by how a man feels when he has lost his wallet. It’s a major emergency far beyond the value of any one item and far beyond the fact that most of the so-called valuable stuff, which can be replaced, is not really the most valuable stuff at all. Considered in this light, wallets may serve as the common key to the bank vaults of the secret lives of men.

  I was asked to conduct a seminar for the senior members of a department of the federal government in Washington, D.C. Held in the solemn marble atmosphere of one of those classic Greco-Roman office buildings. The participants came wearing facades as serious as the building.

  Middle-aged men, in dark suits, white shirts, quietly patriotic ties, dark socks, and polished shoes. Whatever hair they had was short and trim. Respectable in every way, they came bearing serious leather briefcases. Their demeanor was impressive if not downright intimidating. These men were running the United States government. They had no time to waste on frivolous entertainment. The message to me was clear: This seminar had better be worthwhile.

  “A simple request, gentlemen: Please take out your wallets and place them on the table in front of you.”

  And out of that niche on their sterns came the fat old leather hamburgers—molded and moldy from years of use. They laughed. Their covers were blown.

  “Now, please, take everything out of your wallet and spread it out on the table in front of you.”

  I was surprised at how willingly they complied. Their interest was piqued—they didn’t know what was in there any more than I did.

  The usual utilitarian items appeared: cash, credit cards, driver’s licenses, and membership cards. In many cases, several of these items had expired and were no longer valid.

  The bulk of the remaining material had the makings of a scrapbook. Business cards that came from meetings of months and years ago. Odds and ends of paper on which were written lists of things to get or do or buy, names of mechanics and repair services. And mystery information—again and again the murmur would come—“I’ve no idea where this came from or what it means or why it’s in here.”

  Most had some little tiny scraps of paper on which were written those numbers you are not supposed to carry in a wallet: pin numbers for bank-card machines, long-distance credit-card codes, the combination to a safe, private phone numbers, computer-access codes, locker numbers, and Social Security numbers. All written as tiny as possible on tiny pieces of paper, as if microscopic detail would confuse the finder of a lost or stolen wallet. Most men had to get out their reading glasses to read their own hieroglyphics; their eyes, like their memories, needed help. And again came the murmur—“I don’t know what this is for.”

  And sure enough, a certain cultural myth proved to be based on fact—several men did indeed have a condom in their wallets. Still wrapped in the original packaging, but like much else in the wallets, showing signs of having been there a long time—like since junior high school—and provoking about the same level of raucous locker-room joking as they had in junior high.

  Almost all of the men carried photographs. Worn, faded photographs. Nothing recent. Just the pictures of their children and wives when they were young. Little boys and little girls, posed and smiling in vulnerable innocence. Wives in hairdos of another time. Family groups: a mother and father once young, now old or dead and gone. Dogs. Cats. And a goat—supposedly a picture of a family pet, though the other men claimed it was his most recent girlfriend.

  These photographs changed the atmosphere in the room. The men shared them, told the where-are-they-now stories—some of joy and accomplishment, some of sorrow and failure. The only recent photographs were of grandchildren, which of course led to the swapping of tales of precocious promise and pride.

  In the meantime, the men had, of their own volition, loosened their ties and taken off their
suit jackets as they opened up their privates lives without me.

  Not everyone was willing to share everything. I noticed some items being discreetly withheld—the photograph of a current lover—a state secret? Who knows? Even the bank of the secret life has safe-deposit boxes.

  One man—the oldest and most respectably dressed of the lot—a man who, I learned later, was within a week of retirement, had not opened his wallet or relaxed enough to remove his jacket. He had not eliminated himself from the group discussion, but he was not sharing. His colleagues teased him into emptying his wallet.

  For openers, he took out three brand-new condoms. There was a razzing cheer from the group. They gave him a standing ovation.

  He held up his hand for attention and said, “You’re never too old, boys—never give up hope.” And the ovation continued.

  As our seminar rambled on toward its close, I was amazed and amused to notice that every one of them—no exceptions—carefully put everything back into his wallet—every last scrap. And, out of long-practiced habit, each man leaned slightly forward and to one side and replaced this old talismanic scrapbook back where it belonged. These were not just wallets after all. A wallet is a life preserver—found, as usual, under the seat.

  When I think of staff meetings, board meetings, or time served on almost any committee, I think of the one man who triumphed over “meeting madness.” The man whose style I sometimes wish I had.

  David Dugan was his name. Though he had a college degree in civil engineering, and though he read history for pleasure, he enjoyed the pose of the simpleminded common man. Popeye was his model.

  While in college, he had started as right defensive tackle on the football team for four years. After college he made his living as a heavy construction contractor, specializing in sewer systems and pipelines. He ran his life and business the way he played football—straight ahead up the middle, full power, nothing fancy.